1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to printed circuit board manufacturing, and in particular, to a centralized cooling interconnect for multiple electronic packages.
2. Description of Related Art
As circuitry in electronics becomes more and more complex, packaging of the circuitry has become more difficult. The use of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) has made packaging of integrated circuits and other electronic components easier and efficient.
The density of PCBs is limited by many factors. PCB area, or "real estate," has a high premium during the design process, because the PCB real estate cannot be increased for a given PCB size. PCBs are routinely stacked next to each other in card cages, electronic modules, and in other electronic applications. However, the thermal considerations of the electronics act as a barrier to even denser electronic packaging density.
Thermal considerations are routinely overcome by attaching heat dissipative devices, such as finned heat sinks, etc., to individual chips to dissipate heat. However, these heat sinks take up additional room in card cages and electronic modules, and therefore invade the space that other PCBs can occupy, therefore reducing packaging density in the card cage.
As PCB real estate becomes more valuable, designers have started to find ways to reduce the real estate each component occupies. One method for doing this is to remove the die carrier, e.g., the black plastic or ceramic package that is used to make the handling of semiconductor dies easier, from the design. The die that is located within a die carrier is typically much smaller than the carrier itself, and therefore takes up less PCB real estate than the same die with the die carrier attached.
It can be seen, then, that there is a need in the art for a method for dissipating heat in addition to the use of heat sinks. Further, there is a need for heat dissipative devices that take up less real estate or, alternatively, real estate that is more planar with the PCB.